


Lost Stars

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Temporal Mechanics, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:06:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6205360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>People assume time is a straight progression of cause to effect . . .</em>
</p>
<p>After everything that's happened in recent years, Dawn knows some form of time-travel is possible. The thing is, she's only seen it move people forward in time.</p>
<p>Dawn has never had that kind of luck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It has literally been 18 months since I first got the idea for this story; I created the original outline 9/18/14.

 It figured that Bela would find Phil’s psychic with a bullet.

 It also figured that helping her assistant save a senior SHIELD agent would tip the information overload migraine into my-head-feels-like-it-is-about-to-explode-and-that-would-probably-be-an-improvement territory.

 But not even an exploding headache could counter several millennia of ingrained survival instincts.

 Dawn dove to the ground ahead of the angel sword that stabbed the air right where she had just been standing before she even processed that the sound she'd just heard was angel wings.

 Rolling back to her feet, she saw there were three of them. A problem when her head still throbbed with the SHIELD database and she found concentrating on anything – even a life-or-death battle, which always came with angels – just beyond her. The world buzzed in her ears as she drew her own sword and weaved in-between the angelic fighters.

 James was shooting, but the bullets didn't have any noticeable effect and she hadn’t even thought to arm him against angels. She’d barely even explained to him about the ninjas, and angels hadn’t bothered her since she’d lost them after the convergence. She speared the one that turned towards him and heaved the corpse around to use as a shield. It didn't last more than a breath, but it was enough for her to regain her balance. It felt like she was moving through water, sounds and movements muted and hazy. All the dodging and twisting wasn't helping that dissociative feeling. Her head felt blurry and lagging as James moved on to knives, which didn't work any better against angels. She got under the second angel's guard and put her sword through his ribs.

 With her sword momentarily stuck, the third angel managed to pierce her shoulder. She yanked her sword free, pulling away, and then the pain hit.

 A scream burst out of her throat.

 She _twisted_ sideways in an attempt to get away, she had to get away. The world turned gray and dizzying and she stumbled backwards into a pool of water that closed over her head.

 It took almost too long to realize that, sinking motionlessly as she was, she couldn't be the one thrashing the water. The water both slowed and buoyed her movements and she struck out blindly at the mass of shadow that _felt_ like angel.

 Even more than half-blinded from the headache combined with the gray shift and the light reflected in the water, she could feel the death of the angel radiate from the weapon in her hand. It was that that cleared through the white noise in her head just enough for her to realize she needed to surface.

 The air was thicker than the water. It was all she could do to find the edge of the pool and pull herself out. Everything felt heavy and pressed in on her. Worse than dead weight. Worse than dragging Clint away from the rubble of the West Africa base that claimed his hearing. Where was Clint? Oh, she’d kept him out of it this time. Wait. Where was she?

 Blinking didn't really help her vision any. James wasn't there. James was supposed to be there. There were four others instead. Fortunately, one of them felt familiar, even if her eyes refused to focus.

 "Stark?" she asked in exhausted confusion. Coming to a halt was a bad decision because she tumbled sideways and was lost before she ever hit the ground.

***

 The inside of her skull felt like it had been cut open with a rusty bread knife and then scraped raw with a rusty grapefruit spoon. It was empty and echoing and she would swear every ear-piercing beep reverberated under her skin like nails – no, _claws_ – on a chalkboard.

 Fuck HYDRA. Fuck all the angels in Heaven. Wait. No. Joshua was in Heaven. Okay, so fuck _almost_ all the angels in Heaven.

 On the bright side, she was pretty sure her SHIELD-download induced headache was gone.

 Attempting to lift one eyelid felt rather as though someone was trying to burn her eyes out of her head though and she hissed. "Urg. Fuck you all with a splintering tent pole.” It came out as a hoarse whisper.

 "I beg your pardon?"

 She winced. "Sorry," she said automatically even though that voice was far too loud and high for the state of her head. It sounded rather like a more prim-and-proper Bela, which meant of course that it wasn’t Bela. "Not you. Just my head. About to explode. Fuck it all." Dawn pressed the heel of her hands against her eyelids which was more difficult than it should have been because her arms were tangled up in lines and wires that she refused to open her eyes to see. The lady who complained about her language was helpful enough to untangle them for her.

 The lady was also human and not a hunter if she objected to swearing. That was actually a fairly mild one too.

 "I suppose I don't have to ask how you're feeling then," the polite and helpful woman remarked, thankfully more quietly.

 Dawn snorted and then immediately regretted the act.

 "Would you like some water?"

 "Yes, please. Thank you." Just because the Chitauri were doing their level best to claw their way out of her skull didn't mean she couldn't be polite too.

 The water helped, although tentatively cracking open an eyelid still resulted in one of those claws being stabbed through her eye. She hastily closed it again. On the bright side, it didn't look like she in either a civilian hospital or one of HYDRA's lairs.

 "Where am I?"

 "Stark's house."

 "Ah. Figures." He only had a thousand of them everywhere. With SHIELD down for the count, Tony easily had the most resources to handle the resulting mess.

 "You know Mr. Stark well then?" her helper inquired curiously.

 So she wasn't here as Kyria Lux and no one had connected Dawn Morrow to the Avengers yet. Good to know. "Not as well as Pepper, but better than most."

 “Hmm.”

 Despite the angry Chitauri calming somewhat, her head was still scattered enough that it took longer than she would have liked to catch the implications in her tone. "What? No! Not like that. Pepper would burn me alive."

 "Ah."

 When attempts to open her eyes a slit did not immediately in stabbing pains, she squinted and blinked a few times experimentally. The light remained at bearable levels, although she would have preferred it dimmer. She looked at the woman at her bedside and blinked.

 "Huh. You related to Agent Carter?"

 The rather prim, dark-haired woman blinked in astonishment. "What?"

 "Agent Thirteen. Uh, Sharon?"

 "I don't believe I'm familiar with anyone by that name."

 "Oh. Cause you look a lot like her great-aunt."

 "Do I." There was a dangerously raised eyebrow and –

 "Oh. No. I mean – I _don't_ mean you look old. Peggy never got old. She died when she was, uh, twenty nine I think? Yeah, twenty nine. Never made it to thirty, so if anything, it means you look _young_." She was babbling now and judging by the woman rather pale complexion, being compared to someone who died young wasn't helping any. Change the subject. "Where's Stark?"

 "I - uh, Howard is –”

 The woman kept talking but she didn’t hear it under the roaring in her ears.

 Howard.

_Howard_ Stark.

 Not Tony.

 Not Tony at all.

 Eventually the woman – fuck it all, that was _Peggy Carter_  – noticed she wasn't paying attention and said something vaguely, shakily concerned. Dawn blinked and stared into the brown eyes of the dead woman whose file she read twice and had probably downloaded and then realized what she was doing and jerkily turned her head away. She mumbled something about a headache and needing more sleep and was too thankful to question when the should-have-been-dead woman accepted that and left.

 After the door closed behind the very much alive fragment of the very wrong time, Dawn listened to the roar of her too loud heartbeat for a count of sixty before tearing out the IVs and the shoving the wires away and how hadn't she noticed the machines looked wrong?

 This was all wrong.

 She nearly tripped getting out of the bed and then again in the hall but she needed to get away from here and she needed _clothes_  so she ducked into the first room that looked occupied and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. The clothes were too big and the shoes were too tight but she didn't care and stumbled down the hall wearing it all anyway, almost running right into a woman she thankfully didn't recognize.

 "Are you alright? Isn't that English's blouse? Oh. Are you and she . . . I'm not judging or anything but I thought she was still carrying a torch for Captain Rogers? Hey!"

 Dawn pushed away and ran.


	2. Chapter 2

Three weeks. That's all it took to find her.

 Grandfather, but she looked so  _young_.

 Logically Dawn knew that even sixty-three years was a drop in the bucket added to a sum of over five millennia (at her age she was a bit fuzzy on the specifics), but  _stars._  This was a Kyria before Dawn, before SHIELD, before Barseback, before –

 She looked so happy and – not innocent, perhaps, but naïve? This Kyria hadn't been alone in five thousand years and something in Dawn curled up and wept bitterly at how much that change had  _hurt_.

 "You know, when I came to see who's been giving off the weird resonance around my niece, I didn't expect to find my niece."

 Dawn almost fed eight inches of angelic weaponry to the only uncle she  _didn't_  want to kill.

 "Wooh there! Nice reflexes," Gabriel said with a raised brow. It rose higher as he gave her a once over. "Nice sword. Where'd you come by that one?"

 Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly. After several tries she reconnected it to her scattered brain. "Joshua. Apparently I dream of Heaven."

 "Common flaw. I won't hold it against you."

 "Thanks," she said tonelessly.

 "Tiny question though. Whatcha doing in these parts?"

 "I – I don't know."

 "Don't know what you're doing here-now or here-here?"

 "Uh, ei – either? Both? I – I don't –"

 "Because it takes a lot of power to time-hop, and yeah I have that sort of power in spades – trickster or not – but you don't. At least not with the unattached thing  _she's_  got going on. So for  _you_  to have the power to be here, something had to give." She saw something tight and dark in his eyes that her brain stumbled off of. "Who'd ya sign on with?"

 "Huh?"

 "You don't go from her to you on your own. Whose side did you join?"

 She shook her head in confused denial. "I – what – no – what do you – I didn't –"

 "Is he bothering you?"

 Dawn turned to stare blankly at the well-tanned woman appeared out of nowhere like an avenging angel. (Except angels never wanted to protect her and  _she_  was supposed to be the Avenger. Well, she-as-Kyria. In the future. Her past-future?)

 The woman did a double-take. "Rachel?"

 Dawn blinked stupidly before remembering that was the name the Kyria of now was living under. "N-no," she stammered, wishing she hadn't left her coherency back in the future where everything proceeded in a straight line.

  _People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey . . . stuff._

 Sometimes she hated that science fiction occasionally got things right.

 Sometimes she hated that science fiction occasionally was her life.

 "Dawn," she managed. "Dawn – Mason," she added because Dawn Morrow wouldn't be "born" for another thirty years. "Rachel's my . . . cousin. We're . . . not speaking."

 The woman gave a slow nod before glancing back to Gabriel. "Is he bothering you?"

 "That's Gabriel. He's our uncle."

 "That did not answer the question,” the woman pointed out, “so I will take it for a yes. You look as though a strong wind would blow you over, how about I get you some for lunch?"

 Somehow Dawn ended up away from the rightly suspicious archangel and in the kitchen of a randomly normal house as the strong-willed Greek woman watched her mechanically eat a meal as tasteless as everything else she'd eaten since realizing she was in the wrong time. When the woman finally apologized and belatedly introduced herself as Andrea Kormos she burst into tears because Andrea Kormos was a tough old lady and not this youthful beauty and everything was just  _wrong_.

 ***

 The demon's eyes and mouth glowed orange as she slammed the sword into his unprotected throat. His meatsuit dropped limply to the floor when she yanked it back out. The sword almost dropped from nerveless fingers as an unnatural heat pushed past her battle-haze.

 It felt as though someone poured Hell into a furnace and pumped it out into an invisible, sulfur-less fire, but it didn't have the same . . . _inimical_ feel. Hell _warped_ ; this flame-less heat merely _was_. But as with a forest fire, it _hungered_ and would burn through any human life in its path. More than that, though, she could feel that it would taint and corrupt and consume human lives just as surely as the minions of Hell and it had the chance  _because_ of the minions of Hell and because of  _her_ and she felt the heat's power soaking into her bones to join the power in her blood and she couldn't escape Hell's mocking taunt.

 Her fault.

 Always her fault.

 Abruptly furious, she  _pulled_. Pulled the heat – the radiation, that was the word humans used – toward her, pulled it away from broken machinery that could not contain its strength, pulled it away from edges of facility beyond which more innocents sheltered unaware. She had always been aware of the dangers lurking beyond the mundane perception, it was the curse than flowed through her very being, though she failed to protect others from those dangers, time and time again.

 Not this time.

 If the unnatural heat was going to burn, she would burn with it and  _no one else._

 No. One. Else. 

 They shouldn't die for her, because of her. She wasn't worth their lives. She had never been worth their lives.

 She pulled it into herself, drank it down and buried it under the power she could not escape and would not use because she  _couldn't_ , not without one side or the other finding her and slaughtering any that stood too close.

 The radioactive heat was not the righteous fury Heaven's soldiers could bring to bear, nor the insidious, creeping stab of a demon in the darkness and therefore could not compete with the broken keens of a motherless child nor the razor fragments left after watching her heart murdered before her eyes.

 The radiation was only unleashed because the demon wanted  _her_ , because no one could ever leave her alone, because everyone wanted her to  _do_ something, even if it was just die, because the only people who ever wanted  _her_ were dead  _because_  they wanted her –

 Then there was no more of the unnatural heat and the sudden absence had her gasping for breath, hands and knees crashing down on the floor, eyes leaking tears because she could save thousands of strangers but not the only two people she ever really wanted to.

 Viciously, she rubbed at her eyes. What was done was done and she could do nothing for it.

 "I'm supposed to kill you," a voice said conversationally.

 Instinct had her head whipping around to lock onto a sandy blond head up on one of the overhead walkways even as a little voice in her head whined  _now what?_  A heavier piece of her was just so tired of it all, too tired to keep fighting.

 "Seeing how I have no idea what the fuck just happened though," the man with the bow continued, "I'd much rather bring you in to explain it. Because I'm fairly confident it will be a completely mind-blowing explanation that will distract my handler from being pissed I'm being insubordinate. Again. Also, whoever did your psych profile should be shot. I volunteer."

 Gabriel snorted. "I like him."

 She felt so hollow but this was all so insane, even for her, that she couldn't help but laugh. But she couldn't stop and then she started crying and she still couldn't stop.

 "Aw shit, kiddo. I'm sorry."

 "I ne-never dream of Barseback," she hiccupped. It was a critical point in her life, somehow both low and high, but as influential as it was, it never repeated itself in dreams. Not even nightmares where she got there too late and the reactor overloaded and carved a scar across northern Europe . . . which was surprising now that she thought about it.

 She felt more than saw the landscape change which didn't actually help because that was her hammock, which she was almost positive didn't exist in the Garden of this time. Not that she wanted to be in the Garden of this time. She simply didn't want to be _in this time_. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself in an ultimately futile effort to hold herself together.

 She flinched away from a sudden movement, but it was just Gabriel offering her a chocolate bar. Considering she felt like a pack of dementors just went tap-dancing through the room, it helped.

 "So maybe I was a tiny bit overzealous," Gabriel admitted as she nibbled the chocolate. "Can you blame me? What with our family being the way they are? Your life sucks by the way."

 She snorted and then proceeded to choke on her chocolate. Gabriel slapped her back until her airway cleared. She coughed. "Thank you."

 "Least I can do for my favorite relative," he replied dismissively. He tilted his head. "You should probably wake up now," Gabriel added, reaching out to touch her forehead.

 Dawn started awake to see someone leaning over her. She kicked out, diving sideways and coming up in a crouch with her blade in her hand.

 The man –  _vampire_ – drew back and raised his hands non-threateningly.

 "What's going on?" Andrea called, appearing in the doorway. "Benny," she scolded, "I told you she was sleeping. The poor thing was in shock."

 Dawn silently agreed with that assessment, trying to calm her adrenalized reactions. With a great effort, she forced her fingers to release their death-grip on the sword. Benny's eyebrows rose as the sword dropped into immateriality.

 "I thought you didn't smell human," he said with a strong Louisiana accent.

 "Takes one to know one," she retorted wearily. "You know he's a vampire?" she asked Andrea.

 The other woman quickly marshaled her surprise. "I do," she said shortly.

  Dawn nodded. "Okay then."

 "That's all you gonna say on it?" Benny asked with disbelief.

 She shrugged tiredly. "I don't have a problem with vampires. Or werewolves. Or even hunters. As long as they don't make problems."

 "So if I said I drank blood, not people . . . ?"

 "Unless I think there's a body, it's not a problem."

 "Huh. I have to say, I do appreciate that state a thinking," Benny said with a conciliatory nod. "If you don't mind my asking, what manner of being are you?"

 Just like that everything hit her again, like Hulk's fist to the sternum, and she couldn't breathe through the cloying pain of it all. "Alone," she gasped. Alone all over again except  _it hadn’t happened yet_. She could – no. She couldn’t. She _couldn’t._ And that somehow made it all so much worse.

 It hurt to breathe. She pressed a heel to her breastbone but couldn’t reach the ache underneath. "I know how Henry must've felt. Stars, I know why he wanted to go back. But I can't.  _I can't._ "

 She broke down in helpless sobs and wished for all the world the angel had just killed her and not brought her  _here_  and  _now_  and leave her unable to change the haunting tragedy that was her past.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Andrea would be the first to admit she didn't know the first thing about non-human social etiquette. She didn't even know if there was such a thing as non-human social etiquette. Benny didn't want to talk about it and she'd seen enough during the war to know when not to push.

 But there was a girl living in the spare room and Andrea didn't know what kind of non-human she was, where she came from, why she hadn't gotten along with her uncle, or why she wasn't on speaking terms with her near-identical cousin despite moving to the same city.

 What she _did_ know was that Benny had come to some sort of non-human truce with "Dawn Mason" and the girl herself had experienced something utterly devastating enough that she defined herself as "alone" and frequently burst into tears without the slightest provocation.

 Taken together, it all painted a rather dark picture of Dawn’s life and made Andrea wonder what happened to the non-humans of Europe during the war. Had Hitler sent them to camps like he had the Jews and all the rest? Had he given them over to Hydra for experimentation? It had been five years sure, but some wounds were still raw. So despite her curiosity, Andrea didn’t ask.

 She also didn’t ask why Dawn tried to avoid looking at her, but that was more because she hadn’t been trained as a nurse and was at a loss for how to deal with someone so terribly broken.

 So when Peggy asked to meet her for lunch, Andrea jumped at the excuse to let Benny deal with Dawn. Maybe it was because he too wasn’t human, but Dawn held herself together better around him. She didn’t think the thin and teary woman was trying to steal her man. First of all, Benny wouldn’t go for it, and second, you couldn’t fake the kind of broken Dawn was. It was almost painful to look at.

 Thus, the lunch escape. Er. Meeting.

 Despite regular correspondence, they hadn’t seen each other in nearly five years because Andrea didn’t know how to broach the fact that she was living with a vampire and Peg wasn’t the type to take leave from work on a lark.

 That should have been the first warning.

 Andrea didn’t properly realize something was wrong until they actually met for lunch and Peggy was by turns uncharacteristically silent and forcibly jovial. The silences weren’t worse, per se, but they reminded her a bit of Dawn and made her uncomfortable. She kept trying to find a good way to approach it but by the time they almost done with their food Andrea was almost to the point of bluntly asking what the hell happened when her friend suddenly declared, "I was shot."

 Andrea put her fork down. "When?"

 Peggy rubbed her upper right arm; the motion looked unconscious. "Four and a half weeks ago. I . . . I froze."

 " _You_ froze?” That was as unlike her as her behavior over lunch. “Peg, what happened?"

 Her answering smile was brittle. "I was told I was going to die this year."

 "Good God!" Andrea exclaimed, starling upright and almost knocking over her water glass.

 "They all say I shouldn't let it get to me," Peggy continued, as though that reaction was perfectly natural. Although, in all honesty, how was she supposed to react to something like that? "Timothy thinks it was a threat, Jarvis thinks it was said to upset me, and Howard just thinks she was crazy. I honestly couldn't say which I agree with. She just – I don't know. Do you think there is more to life than has been explained by science?"

  _I'm living with a vampire._ "Almost certainly," Andrea replied with a straight face. "Why do you ask?"

 "I do not believe she knew whom she was speaking to," Peggy admitted slowly. "Or rather – she knew I looked rather like Peggy Carter, who apparently has a grand-niece named Sharon, but she didn't seem aware that _I_ was Peggy Carter. It was almost – and I know this sounds crazy, but it almost seemed like she thought she was living in the land of tomorrow."

 Andrea gave Peggy a look. "Are you asking if I believe in psychics or time-travelers?"

 "Both. Neither. I don't know. I don’t know what I'm asking, to be honest," the former British intelligence agent replied. "She certainly made it sound like she was a contemporary of my hypothetical grand-niece. Maybe Howard's right and she was just crazy."

 "It certainly sounds crazy," Andrea agreed.

 "I'm well aware," Peggy noted dryly.

 "You keep saying 'she.' Classified? Or just –"

 "Unknown," Peggy agreed with a frown. "She didn't giv **e** a name before stealing my clothes and disappearing, and I haven't had any luck finding one since. Nobody we've come across can even truthfully say they've met her."

 "How'd you meet her?"

 Peggy pursed her lips. "Howard insists they fell out of a plane and had impeccable aim. Since the other option is that they fell out of thin air and into his pool, well, landing a freefall in his pool does sound more believable."

 "'They?'" Andrea questioned.

 "There were two of them originally," Peggy explained. "But the woman killed the man, recognized Howard, and promptly fainted. Howard's _still_ complaining about having the pool cleaned."

 "From what you've told me, he would," Andrea replied. Howard apparently could be ridiculous and petty. "Did she disappear into thin air – or a plane as the case may be?" Benny didn't disappear into thin air, but maybe there was something out there that could.

 Peggy gave a laugh that rather sounded like grating broken glass. "If only. No, Angie said she ran out dressed in my clothes."

 "Ah, you mentioned the clothes-stealing, didn't you? She didn't take anything good, did she?"

 "My yellow daisy blouse."

 "The one you said made you look fat and not old enough to go to a bar? I'd say she did you a favor there."

 A more proper-sounding laugh tore itself out of Peggy's throat and she had to put a hand over her mouth to catch its compatriots.

 "That's better, now, isn't it?" Andrea asked with a grin.

 "You're still unbelievable, Andy, you know that, yes?" 

 "I have to be, dear Peg," Andrea replied brightly. "Otherwise I would have been swept away when Greece was invaded."

 Peggy made a disbelieving noise. "You ran blockades in a yacht."

 "I was a simple, pretty heiress. A little flirtation and no one was going to sink my yacht."

 "You're about as simple as whatever Howard's latest crazy scheme is," Peggy retorted.

 "I try," Andrea said with a grin as her friend laughed again. "Now let me see your picture of your mystery woman."

 "What makes you think I have one on me?"

 Andrea raised her eyebrows. "Peg, darling, I have contacts. You know I have contacts. I know that you would never pass up the opportunity for me to check with my contacts. Thin air or not, someone has to know her."

 It was only by the grace of Betsy the waitress coming by to ask about dessert that Peggy failed to notice that _Andrea_  knew the woman in the photo. Either it was Dawn, or her cousin, or perhaps another of her lookalike relations. The resemblance was undeniable. But Dawn wasn't human and Benny hadn't wanted her to tell her government friend about what he was, so she would talk to Dawn before she said anything to Peggy.

 "I'll be sure to keep an eye out," Andrea said with a straight face. She didn’t _like_ lying to her friend, but when the other option was revealing Benny – it was the lesser of the evils. She hoped that maybe she could introduce the two and eventually tell Peggy the truth, but that wasn’t now. Not yet.

 "I would greatly appreciate it," Peggy said with such gratitude that Andrea felt absolutely wretched about herself. "I just – I want to know what she meant when she said I was going to die."

 And damn if the shadow in Peggy's eyes at that wasn't nearly a match for the one haunting Dawn's. "Well," Andrea said with forced lightness, "she dressed as you, didn't she? Maybe that makes her the Peggy Carter with the appointment in Samarra."

 Peg stopped and considered that. "Certainly no more crazy than any other theory I've heard," she said finally.

 


	4. Chapter 4

"I had lunch with my old friend Peggy Carter today," Andrea announced that night. "She's looking for information on a woman who looks rather like you and your cousin."

 Between one blink and the next, all the color leeched from Dawn's face. "You can't let her find K-Rachel," Dawn said, shaking her head frantically. 

 Benny raised an eyebrow, but Andrea plowed ahead, asking, "But I can let her find you?" with an air of incredulity. Why fall on the sword for the cousin she wasn't getting along with? What was going on between them?

 "She can't find Rachel," Dawn insisted – begged really – still shaking her head. "She _can't_."

 "Why not?" Andrea pressed, because Dawn never made any sense at all and someone had possibly foretold Peggy’s death and that was her friend and Andrea wanted to know what was going on.

 "Peggy never found her. I didn't – I never had anything to do with them until Clint – I would _remember_ – it didn't happen – so it _can't_ happen – if I met Peggy now . . . I don't even know what would happen. Peggy didn't find me – can't find me – Rachel – she can't find Rachel –"

 Andrea was not ashamed to admit she gaped speechless as her guest shut her mouth with an audible clink of teeth.

 Thankfully Benny recovered enough to break the ensuing silence. "May I presume that such a thing as time-travel does in fact exist?"

 Andrea was still staring when Dawn grimaced and studied her nailbeds. "Yeah. You – you may presume that."

 "May I also presume that the reason you so stringently avoid your cousin and her husband is that she is really a younger version of you?"

 She nodded jerkily.

 "Well now. That's a pickle."

 Andrea swallowed down the sour taste in her mouth. "You told Peggy she was going to die."

 Grey eyes met hers before quickly looking away. "Everybody dies," Dawn said, a hoarse quality in her voice.

 "You told her she was going to die _this year_ ," Andrea said with an amazingly even voice. Dawn was from the future and her best friend was going to _die?_

 "I didn't – I didn't know who she _was_ when I said that – I – I didn’t – I didn't know the _year_ ," Dawn began, voice rising with the beginnings of another panic.

 "But it hasn't happened yet," Andrea insisted. "Not for us. We can stop it. We can save her."

 Dawn wrapped her arms around herself as she trembled, shaking her head mutely.

 "You have come back in time," Benny said curiously. "Why not change things for the better?"

 "I _can't_  change things," Dawn exclaimed shrilly, arms flying out so quickly Andrea flinched. "I am – I ended up here due to a – a confluence of events. And if – if I _change_ something, anything, m-maybe those events don't happen, or d-don't happen in the – in the s-same way. If I take one domino out of the line, h-how did I go back in time to change th-things in the f-first place?"

 "I don't know," the vampire admitted. "That's tricky."

 "Have to preserve the t-temporal c-continuity," the time-traveler stuttered with the kind of desperate certainty Andrea hadn't seen since the war. "Like in H-Harry Potter – if you went b-back, then you – you had a-always been there, not ch-changing anything – but k-keeping time on its c-course."

 "Who's Harry Potter?" Benny asked.

 For some reason Dawn evidently found that absurdly funny and burst out laughing. She clamped both hands over her mouth, but that didn't stop the hysterical laughter, which quickly gave way to sobs. Andrea marshaled herself and helped Dawn sit on the couch before the emotional woman collapsed. It was a near thing. And then Andrea was trapped there because Dawn latched onto her and sobbed into her lap.

 She shot Benny a beseeching look.

 He just shrugged.

 She glared at him.

 He went to get a glass of water.

 Andrea was not impressed.

 But the water was something to press into Dawn's hands as she slowly wound down. The woman from the future drank the water and quietly calmed down.

 "I know – will know? – a – a woman, who could see something of the future," Dawn finally offered once the glass was emptied.

 "You know a seer?" Benny asked in startlement.

 Dawn managed the semblance of a smile. "She's, uh, not from around here. I do know two psychics though. And there's probably a few other real ones out there who haven't made themselves known. They can't see the future though. Oh, and a prophet." Andrea raised her eyebrows. "But he only sees the immediate future and has a really narrow focus besides. But Fr – uh, the seer – she analogized time to a tree." Another smile that looked less strained. "She's big on tree metaphors. She said it was possible, though a difficult and tricky proposition, to change the shape of the branches growth, but it was impossible, and moreover  _dangerous_ , to try to change the path already taken. Something about, ah, the inadvisability of trying to break the branch you were on while you were on it."

 "Couldn't you just move to a different branch?" Benny asked.

 "Now you're getting into the multiverse theory."

 "Multiverse?" Andrea questioned. She was unfamiliar with that term.

 Dawn nodded absently, lost in her head. "It's the idea that any choice anyone faces is a branching point and that as a result there are an infinite number of possible universes. Some may differ only as far as, say, clothing choices, whereas there may a universe in which you were born the opposite gender, or you were never turned into a vampire, or you didn't survive a near-fatal incident. Maybe there's a universe where Hitler prevailed, or America never won the Revolutionary War. The possibilities are infinite, but until someone successfully travels to and from another universe, it is nothing more than an unproven, if interesting, theory."

 "So you can't universe hop in with your time traveling?" Benny asked with a grin.

 "No." But then Dawn paused and thought of something that was probably only slightly less insane that time traveling because she amended it to, "Not that I know of." 

 "So something vague and dire will occur if you step one foot outta the timeline?"

 "I think so?" she offered. "I'd really rather not test that."

 "Fair enough," Benny agreed, looking at Andrea.

 She pressed her eyes closed and sighed. Something vague and dire _might_  occur if Peggy did not die as scheduled. At the same time, it might not. But she would only know what to save Peggy from if Dawn told her, and current reactions indicated the only way that would happen would be in Andrea pressed her until she broke more than she already was. Andrea could not break the poor girl just to save her friend; Peggy would never want her life to be at the expense of someone else's.

 ***

 In the end, she didn't tell Peggy about Dawn.

 Armed with Dawn's contrastingly vague and detailed notes on her younger-self's movements, Andrea took it upon herself to keep Peggy occupied and away from "Rachel." If that meant she got to spend more time with her friend in the limited time they had left, well, she never claimed she was doing it _only_  for Dawn and her temporal continuity.

 She did, however, tell Peggy that just because no one had yet proved that seers existed didn't mean they _didn't_. "Maybe she was crazy, and maybe it was meant to throw you off-balance, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful," Andrea warned.

 Peggy agreed wholeheartedly.

 As did Howard when he arrived two weeks later to berate her for disappearing.

 "I did not disappear," Peggy objected. "I was put on medical leave. And I left a note."

 "He didn't wait for me to finish reading it to him," Howard's minder explained dryly.

 Apparently the Howling Commandos also had plans to come visit Peggy, which no one thought to mention to Andrea until after Dugan came up behind her and she put him on the floor.

 Fortunately, they all thought it was hilarious and impressive and wanted to adopt her after that. Andrea refused to join their crazy army unit, but let Peggy explain about the organization she was creating to replace the SSR (and that Andrea had been hearing bits about in letters).

 All told, there were so many people in the area who knew what Peggy's ominous mystery woman looked like that Andrea was sure it would take a miracle to keep them all away from both iterations of Dawn.

 


	5. Chapter 5

History was being written right beside her and Dawn could not work up any enthusiasm for it. Charlie she knew would over the moon to have a real-time accounting of how Andrea Kormos got started with SHIELD, probably Adeline and a few of the other ninjas as well.

 Dawn was just terrified one of the far too many people invading the city would stumble over her past self and upset the entire timestream.

 She spent days lurking in the house with the vampire, who did his best to put her at ease while wheedling stories out of her. Benny was getting a fair picture of NINJAT, although after one slip she had to warn him off checking out the Winchesters (until after Abaddon trashed the Men of Letters in eight years) or the Campbells (because those were some hardcore hunters who wouldn't give a rat's ass about him not drinking people).

 Recognizing that she probably would have been more receptive to having her fingernails pulled out than some of the information he coaxed her into sharing, Benny admitted he had a family from when he'd been human that he kept track of. He wasn't fool enough to have Andrea dock in the same town as his descendants, but he wasn't half a state away either.

 "I'm sentimental," he admitted. "Now anyways."

 Benny, as she learned, had been turned by a vampire with delusions of godhood. Not many vampires were willing to make the transition to ninja, but his maker sounded like one of the more egotistical of the ones that needed to be ganked on her watch.

 "Your maker – he means everything to you. I mean, you really start believing he's God. Now if your maker happens to believe the same thing, well . . ."

 "There's a reason American hunters aren't quite out of a job yet," Dawn agreed. While enough vamps went ninja that Lenore's wasn't the only nest these days, there were at least two incidents she was aware of where a recent "convert" attacked their adopted nest and the ninja-vamps had to put the newcomer down.

 Admittedly, that wasn't a phenomenon limited to vampires.

 Before meeting Andrea, Benny and his nest had apparently been vampirates.

 "You know, all the years we ran together, I can't believe nobody ever thought of that."

 "Seriously? Becky could probably tell you three trashy romance novels featuring that, and that's just off the top of her head. Probably haven't been written yet," she added less enthusiastically. 

 Hearing how love at first sight had saved the beautiful Greek heiress and changed Benny's life wasn't as heartwarming as it should have been. It brought to mind things she'd rather not think about and when Benny commented on her distraction, she suggested he had a promising career as a poet with lines like "letting the ocean swallow up their sins." 

 Thankfully, he let it go.

 But all the story swapping in the world couldn't disguise her worries about the integrity of Kyria's timeline, which roiled her stomach to no end. Andrea was anxious about Peggy and trying not to show it; Dawn was just anxious. About everything.

 One of the worries she was willing to give voice to was the nagging suspicion that even though her memory of events and timing wasn't perfect, Dawn was almost positive she had moved on from Louisiana sometime relatively soon but couldn't for the life of her remember _why_.

 When her anxieties got too loud, cooped up in the house with a vampire as she was, she walked. It didn't matter where, what with Andrea providing information on where Peggy and the others were. It was just something relatively mindless that helped her keep the weight of the timeline from crushing her.

 Mostly.

 She walked and tried not to think about the fact that she didn't know how to get home, although she thought (really, really hoped) it was possible. She got here after all – it stood to reason she could get back as well. Hopefully going home wouldn't involve getting stabbed again, she mused cynically while absently checking for traffic.

 She was halfway across the street before she realized she'd seen that thing she had been steadfastly avoiding thinking about this whole time.

 Dawn didn't have to look to feel the eyes on her.

 Heart pounding in her ears, she turned and ran.

 ***

 A hand ghosted against her arm and she lashed out instinctively, _stay away_.

The reaction shifted her momentum, however, and she failed to catch her stumble on the uneven ground which, combined with the weight of history slamming into her back as he failed to slow down, meant she ate dirt and gravel as the ditch on the side of the road rose up to swallow her.

 The shards of the fallen tree branch her body splintered on impact shifted under her shoulder and there was a largish rock digging painfully her hip and it took a moment for her to acclimate to the stunned ringing on her head, but then memory returned and she kicked out.

 By the groan, her foot caught him in the stomach. She kicked again, twisting around onto her knees to lever herself up and away. He caught her ankle and yanked. She wheezed as the rock dug up into her stomach, then rolled, throwing a handful of wood chips at his face. He ducked and turned away with a rebuking, "Kyria!" but she only followed it up with another kick and a swing of a second branch at his head. It broke on the arm he raised to block and then he lunged, attempting to pin her down by virtue of heavier weight. She bucked. "Kyria, stop it!" She got an arm loose and _felt_ his nose break. It loosened his grip enough that she pulled herself free before her foot slipped in the agitated debris and she got a glimpse of the blood on his face.

 She froze, something inside her recoiling at the sight.

 "I killed you." The words slipped out even before her brain could shudder away from the memory of his blood. Her hands rose to her mouth too late to stop the words. Or the anguish that came with them.

 "I killed you," she repeated, voice strangely hollow and broken. Broken. She was – no –

 Arms wrapped around her, painfully familiar, and something in her _broke_ because he was dead, Matt was dead, she watched him _die_ –

 She tried to shove him away because, "It's my _fault._ I killed you. And I'm killing you again!"

 But he only held her tighter as her walls crashed down and she cried.

 ***

 The ever-oppressive humidity approached more bearable levels because the sun was low in the sky – too low to be seen from their ditch – by the time Dawn was anything resembling clear-headed.

 She didn't want to leave the comforting circle of Matt's arms but, "I watched you die."

 "Yet I'm right here," he countered. "Care to explain how you can be Kyria, but not the Kyria I was with just this morning? What happened, love?"

 She shook her head. "I'm not – I'm not Kyria. I'm Dawn. I'm not your Kyria."

 "You were Rachel this morning. Doesn't matter. You're still Kyria. And you're _always_ my Kyria."

 "No, I'm – I _was_ Kyria. But Kyria is –" a different person now "– I'm Dawn," she settled for instead.

 "You _are_ Kyria. The same way I'm Matt and the sky is blue."

 "You're Matthias."

 "A version of Matthew, meaning -"

 "Gift of God," she said with him, then clamped her mouth shut. She wasn't doing this. This was – just, no. He was _dead._ She _couldn't_ do this.

 He nodded. "You gave me that name, the same way your mother gave you Kyria. You were her beloved and I was your gift you said. So whatever has happened to you, you are Kyria and my death wasn't your fault."

 "But it was! They were trying to kill me! Not you. They wanted _me_."

 "I'm glad."

 "What?"

 "I'm glad it was me."

 "What?"

 "If one of us had to die, I'm glad it was me. Not that I'm happy about abandoning you at some point in the future but – I'm glad it was you who survived."

 This was – she wasn't – this _made no sense_. It was _her fault_ and he just – "What?" she repeated helplessly.

 "I couldn't survive without you," he said in much the same way he said the sky was blue. "Yours is the only light I've ever known in my life. Without you I would have nothing. Not even a name."

 Tears she thought spent threatened again as she tried and failed for words. Any words.

 "You could survive," he continued simply. "You _have_ survived. I won't ask how long it’s been - and I won't think it wasn't absolutely abominable for you afterwards – but you survived. Willingly or not, you kept going. And you're still so beautiful."

 Absolutely abominable didn't _begin_ to cover the black pit of despair that stretched over the years separating Matt's death and Barseback. If it had gone differently she would have _welcomed_ Clint's arrow. And he was just – and he said –

 It had been so long since he called her beautiful.

 She burst into tears again.

 Matt stroking her hair in a way that was so heartbreakingly familiar it was comforting even as it made her tears multiply. She missed him so much and she had to leave him, had to let him die _again_ as if the first time hadn't been hard enough – she wasn't even supposed to be here! She was supposed to avoid him and not break the timeline and what if she'd already done too much damage? What if this reunion imploded her universe?

 "I'm glad I have warning," he murmured quietly against her ear, halting her ricocheting thoughts mid-motion. "I always hoped, but now I know. If I die first, I want to show you how much I love you while I have the chance."

 And her heart _twisted_ because he _had_ been more demonstrative in the years before his death and it made his death hurt _more_ and it was all because of _this_ , because of _her_. She had always come back and she had always met him here and he _had always known he was going to die_.

 The tears wouldn’t stop.


	6. Chapter 6

Eventually her tears ran dry.

 "I love you. You know that right?"

 Her answering laugh was watery. "Yes. I know. I love you. I've always loved you. I will always love you," she said, voice breaking. Dawn took a steadying breath. She didn't want to lose him again, but –

 This was nothing but a brief respite. Matt – _her_ Matt – was dead. This Matt would die and she couldn't live with that again. "You should probably take m – Kyria and move on. Don't stay here. She can't find out about me."

 He didn't try to argue and for that she was unspeakably grateful. _This_ was why they left Louisiana the first time. She could keep young-Kyria away from SHIELD until Clint introduced them.

 "And how should I explain this?" he asked wryly, pointing to his nose.

 Dawn frowned, trying to remember. Now that she thought about it, Matt _had_ broken his nose. "I think . . . you said something about running into a nest of vampires?" Then her brain caught up to her words and her eyes widened. "Shit!" she exclaimed, roughly shoving herself to her feet. "Benny!"

 She distantly heard Matt scramble to his feet even as she took off running.

 ***

 The house was empty when she got there. She hoped that was a good thing. Matt came bounding up beside her, but said nothing as she entered the house.

 No bodies, no blood. Nothing out of place or in disarray.

 Dawn let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

 "What were you expecting to find?"

 "I _hoped_  to find nothing," Dawn admitted, forcing herself to breathe normally. Andrea and Benny were fine. She hadn't slipped through a loop in the timestream just to watch someone else die. Please, Grandfather, let her not have slipped through time just to watch someone else die.

 "But . . . ?" he prompted.

 She grimaced. "I've been staying with here with a vampire and his girl."

 "So when I told . . . will tell you my broken nose involved vampires, you assumed something happened to them?"

 "The way my life's been going lately?" She sighed and tried to think. If Benny's nest _was_  coming back – based on their history of piracy, they liked to avoid loose ends. Andrea had her yacht, but there was always traffic at the dock. It wouldn't be private enough for a vamp attack. And while she didn't know where the two of them had gone out tonight, most places they frequently were similarly not deserted enough, so trying to hunt them through the town was out.

 Dawn hoped that lying in wait at the house was the right thing to do.

 Please, Grandfather, let her not have slipped through time just to let someone else die.

 "I want everything to be okay," Dawn said plaintively, "but it's entirely possible Benny's nest is coming to take offense for how he dumped them for a human woman."

 "Ah. But Benny is okay?"

 "More traditional than Lenore's vegetarians, but yeah, he doesn't drink people," she replied absently, plotting how to lay a trap for a possible nest of vampires who were almost six decades too early to know about ninjas and were under the thumb of an old vampire with aspirations of godhood.

 Godhood wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

 And old vampires were a pain to kill.

 Thoughts flying in a thousand directions, she hurriedly changed her rather dirty and ripped clothing for the dress Andrea had worn the day before. It wasn't as flattering on her figure as it was over the Greek's curves, but it would muddle the inhumanness of her scent at least for a little while.

 Only as she dug around for a belt did she realize Matt was watching her. She flushed. She had gotten dressed in close quarters with Clint before (half a century from now), but basic appreciation aside, that was professional. This was . . . not.

 Ghost or not, this was _Matthias_. And Grandfather but she missed him.

 But while he was Matthias, he wasn't her Matthias. Her Matt was long dead and lost to her. This Matt belonged to an earlier part of her life, one that had its own Morningstar's daughter. She shook her head clear.

 "You know a lot of vampires?" he asked with casual surprise.

 She flinched. Yeah, okay, so they had really stuck to themselves, isolated themselves, for millennia because they hadn't trusted most non-humans. And in her real time, she'd kind of gone the complete opposite way there, but having only one lifeline and watching it get wrenched away?

 Not something she wanted to repeat. Ever.

 (Even if she had to let it happen for the first time now for the sake of causality. Grandfather that _hurt._ )

 "We're organizing," she said, mouth dry. "It's safer."

 He just nodded and what did it say about her that she no longer could read his every gesture and expression when once they were inseparable?

 "Go keep watch?" she asked hoarsely.

 "Of course," he agreed, but his smile looked sad.

***

 Benny slowed to a halt on the edge of the yard, stepping between her and the house. It took Andrea a moment to spot the sandy-haired man in the shadows by the door.

 "You Benny?" the man called lowly.

 Benny inhaled deeply. "Who's asking?" he replied.

 "A friend of a friend," the stranger said. "You know how it is."

 "No, I really don't," Benny insisted.

 "Look, are you Benny or not?"

 "And just why should I answer questions from a fellow trespassing on my property?"

 "Because I've had a long and confusing night and found out some things I'm going to be living with for a while."

 "I can shorten that for you, if you're interested," Benny offered, mouth full of extra teeth.

 A long, thin blade appeared in the stranger's hand. "I'm really not interested."

 Andrea felt her eyes widen involuntarily because Dawn had pulled a blade out of thin air like that once.

 As if the thought had summoned her, the non-human woman came around the side of the house. "Put it away both of you!" she hissed in annoyance, hands clenched at her sides. "Someone might see!"

 "I'll take that as a yes," the man said quietly, blade dropping out of his hand into nothingness, but Andrea was too busy staring at Dawn to pay much attention.

 Dawn was wearing the dress Andrea'd had on the day before, although it no longer looked the same. For all her concern about someone seeing anything out of the ordinary, the sleeves were torn, the skirt was ripped, and the whole of it was splattered with blood.

 "Why are you covered in blood?" Benny asked, in that dangerously loose and calm voice she found both protective and a turn on.

 Dawn looked down at herself and shrugged as if she hadn't realized what she looked like. "Sorry about the dress."

 "It's fine," Andrea managed. Why should Dawn only steal Peggy's clothes after all, she thought distantly.

 "Still waitin' on an explanation," Benny said, only one set of teeth visible.

 "We have to do this out here?" Dawn demanded.

 Benny crossed his arms. "I smell blood in the house."

 Dawn rolled her eyes. "Your old man finally caught up to you."

 Benny stiffened and entered the house with nary another protest. Andrea followed, confused, as the thin, sandy-haired man brought up the rear.

 Just because Andrea's work during the war had run more towards intelligence than the front lines didn't mean she was a stranger to blood. She just wasn't expecting to see severed heads lined up on her kitchen floor.

 And behind them, arms crossed and leaning against the counter with casual ease, stood Dawn in her borrowed, bloodstained dress, looking more at ease than Andrea had ever seen her.

 "Did I get 'em all?"

 Andrea glanced over, but Benny was just staring at the heads. The unnamed man who was probably whatever Dawn was drifted into the front room to move – presumably – the bodies these heads belonged to.

 Dawn noticed the drift and grimaced. "Pretty sure your rug's a lost cause."

 "Vinegar and cold water," the man called.

 Dawn huffed out a breath. "It's an awful lot of blood. She can't even move the sofa to cover the spot because it's a big damn irregular spot." She raised an eyebrow at the vampire. "Well?"

 "Yes," Benny said in a detached voice. "Even if the old man turned anyone new, he wouldn't trust ‘em enough to leave 'em in the nest on their own. This is everyone that was there when I left." He shook his head. "What happened?" 

 "Your father was a jealous god," Dawn remarked flippantly. "And you committed the gravest sin of all when you left him. None of them seemed to like you much, and they were all in favor of killing me, especially when they thought I was your girl. Fortunately, I haven't been defenseless in a long time. And they weren't expecting Matthias." Presumably that was Dawn's friend.

 "But this guy," Dawn kicked one of the heads with her foot, which Andrea noticed was bare, lightly, but enough that the head rolled onto its side and Andrea's gorge rose at the severed neck exposed to her kitchen. She wasn't a fainting flower, but she didn't think she'd be able to eat in here again without thinking about this.

 "This one's your maker, isn't he?" 

 "That's the old man," Benny agreed, still staring.

 Dawn nodded. "I figured. He really was full of himself. Even after I beheaded the others, he just blathered on about inevitability and how the universe was a – a pyramid of despair. Clearly you inherited your poetic tendencies from him." She snorted. "You didn't get your common sense from him, though. He called me a gnat. _Me_. A _gnat._ I've faced down Chitauri, and Dark Elves, and pagan gods, and fairy witches, and this egotistical little puffed up vampire has the _audacity_ to call me a _gnat_?" 

 Her last sentence seemed to be directed mostly at the head, and the woman didn't see her friend standing in the doorway with the most bittersweet loving expression Andrea had ever seen. The closest was probably Peggy in those days she'd seen her near the end of the war. Just who was Matt and what was going to happen to Dawn that he looked at her like Peggy had looked about Steve when she hadn’t been about to cry?

 "I just wanted them to let me go," Benny said quietly.

 "Jealous god, remember?" Dawn said. "Besides, he didn't much seem like the letting go type."

 "Thank you," Benny said with such force of emotion that Andrea resolved to ask about his history when they got this all sorted.

 Dawn shrugged it off though. "You helped me. Fair's fair. Hey, now that you're here, want to help us dump the bodies?"

 "Help would definitely be appreciated," Matt said, throwing off whatever mood he'd been in so thoroughly Andrea wouldn't have suspected if she hadn't seen him.

 Benny shook his head, but he was laughing, so that was probably a yes.

 ***

 Matt caught her arm before he left. Andrea turned to him, startled.

 "Look after her, will you?"

 "What happens to her?" she asked quietly. "She won't tell us of the future, but I see how you look at her. You _know_ something."

 Matt smiled at her, but his eyes were sad and glimmered with the beginnings of tears unshed. "She loses me. After all this time, I don't think she remembers how to be alone. But she survives. And she remakes herself with all the strength I've always known she possessed. But I won't live to see it, because she has to lose me first. Still as beautiful as the day I met her."

 And quite suddenly Andrea understood why Dawn would speak of Rachel, yet always failed to mention Rachel's husband. At some point in the years between Rachel and Dawn, Matt had died. And while Andrea cursed the strictures of timelines and temporal causality for the fate of a friend, Dawn had been quietly stewing over the fate of one much closer.

 "How long were you together?" she asked before she could stop herself, even as he walked away.

 That bittersweet smile again. "Forever." He gave a rueful laugh. "A few millennia."

 "What _are_ you?"

 "Genesis 6:4."

 "Geneh –" But he was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Dawn looked up at the twisting branches of Anna's miracle tree and tried not to cry. "I could save him," she said plaintively, feeling the gnarls of the bark beneath her fingers. "But I don't what would happen if I did. Maybe I'd break the universe, or maybe I'd make a new one. The Doctor claims time is a big ball of timey-wimey stuff, but Dumbledore insists I cannot be seen – which is already as defunct as when Harry saw himself – and what if saving him doesn't break time but still makes things worse?"

 She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes but it did nothing for the ache behind them. "I want to think everything would be better, but I know Murphy's my copilot. Maybe we both would die. Fuck, maybe if I wasn't damn near suicidal at the time, I wouldn't have been able to stop the fallout at Barseback. Maybe the Gate would have opened properly and my father would be ruling over the world now – or dead, but I'm not that optimistic."

 Kicking the tree did nothing to quell her frustration and only made her foot hurt.

 "Fuck!"

 She dropped to the ground, legs bent out to either side, head drooping. "I'd ask to wake up now but that wouldn't change anything. I'm supposed to be here." Her laugh was pitiful and watery. She rubbed her eyes angrily. "I met Andrea as an old woman, but I don't think she and Benny would have survived those vampires on their own. And I broke m-Matt's nose and was the reason we left Louisiana. So clearly I was always in 1950 twice. Fuck.

 "I really don't want to spend the next sixty five years in a hut in a swamp somewhere," she whined. Just this once, she was fucking allowed to be whiny. "I just want to go _home_."

 "I might be able to help with that," Gabriel offered.

 "But how do I know _when_ I'm supposed to go back?"

 "Eh. I'm sure you'll figure it out. You've done alright for yourself so far." Gabriel looked at the dream-tree she was sitting under and snapped up a chocolate bar. "Done a lot better than anyone would've expected."

 She snorted halfheartedly. "Especially what with the naysaying assholes in our family."

 "There's that," he agreed.

 Dawn put her hands on the ground behind her and leaned back, looking up at the branches. "I never wanted any of this. I just . . . wanted to be left alone. But people died. People I . . ." Her voice broke. "People I cared for. And I thought if I didn't care it wouldn't hurt. But I _do_ care and I can't just sit back and do nothing while they get hurt. Even . . . even if they're going to die anyway. I just, I can't. He dies. Died. And I'm letting him. Because I'm afraid and I know it wouldn't help. I'm _killing_  him, because I can imagine just how much worse it all could be!"

 "You can't change the past," Gabriel pointed out.

 "But Andrea's right! It's not the past yet! Not for them. Not for him." She squeezed her eyes closed and let out a slow, painful breath. "But it is for me. This all happened before. And it will all happen again," she added, the faint laugh physically hurting and she just wanted to curl up and cry but that wouldn't help and it wouldn't change anything.

 "I wish I could tell you differently, kid, but you don't get to be our age without scars."

 "I know," she said quietly. "I know."

 ***

 Dawn shut down after her past-dead-husband left. Andrea watched the other woman close herself off and mentally retreat and didn't have the slightest idea how to stop it, how to _help_.

 Especially as Peggy kept reeling her deeper and deeper into something that made Dawn withdraw more and more. Andrea couldn't give up her best friend, not even to open a connection with a woman she considered something of a friend after hosting her all these months, but she did stop telling Benny work stories in Dawn's hearing.

 She didn't know if it helped, but it was something, and she didn't think it would make Dawn worse.

 Benny, in response to her prodding, told her everything he never told her before about becoming a vampire and what he'd done with his nest. She thought he thought it would make her leave him. Andrea told him he was a fool, but he was still _her_  fool. And with every story he told about Quentin and Sorento and the others, Andrea couldn't shake the image of Dawn standing bloodstained but _proud_ , comfortable in her own skin and laughing at the nerve of one "egotistical little puffed up vampire" who dared to challenge her.

 That Dawn had vanished as quickly as she'd arrived, leaving a shaken, withdrawn ghost in her place, going through the motions but not appearing to feel it at all.

 Which was why Andrea was so surprised the day Dawn adamantly refused to let her leave the house to meet Peggy.

 "Why not?" Benny asked, deftly avoiding the direct lines of sunlight from the open windows as he carried a mug full of blood.

 Dawn mutely shook her head, refusing to budge from where she blocked the door.

 Andrea gave serious consideration to simply climbing out a window, but Dawn's frantic, jerky gestures were too much a piece with the way the time-traveler had moved the day Andrea had come home after –

 She gasped, hands flying up to cover her mouth as her eyes began to well. "That can't be _today_ –"

 Dawn did some kind of full body shudder that left her looking exhausted as she gave a single unhappy nod.

 "How is she going to die?" Benny asked when it became apparent neither woman was capable of speaking.

 Dawn's mouth moved silently a few times before she finally managed, "There was a fire."

 "A fire," Andrea repeated, tight bands across her chest making it quite difficult to breathe. "She won't be able to get out?"

 That helpless, haunted look was back in Dawn's eyes.

 "What can you tell us?" Benny prompted.

 "I memorized her ob-obituary?" Dawn half offered, half asked.

 Benny raised an eyebrow. "You memorized her obituary?"

 Dawn's nod was hesitant. "Yeah."

 "I want to hear it," Andrea declared, irrationally pleased her voice sounded steady.

 Dawn closed her eyes, took several slow breaths, and her entire figure relaxed. "Captain America's sweetheart died Monday in a heroic effort to clear people from a burning building. Margaret 'Peggy' Carter, daughter of Harrison and Amanda (Wolff) Carter, was only twenty-nine. In a manner much like her lost love, Carter stayed in the flame-drenched office building, searching for trapped workers and then directing them to safety without partaking of the exit herself. Twelve people were saved by Carter's actions. The cause of the fire is under investigation, but initial investigations suggest a connection to a New York cinema massacre four years ago. The untimely collapse of the roof claimed the lives of Carter and the last two souls trapped within, Elliot Crane and Dawn m-Mason," Dawn finished with a gasp, eyes flying open.

 "Dear Lord," Andrea breathed.

 "You're Dawn Mason," Benny said slowly.

 "I – yes." Dawn pressed a hand to her mouth. Inexplicably she laughed. It was a poor, watery thing, but her eyes shone.

 "Are you alright?" Andrea asked warily.

 "I'm going _home_ ," Dawn said with a wide smile.

 It took a moment to make the connection. Andrea gasped. "Will you bring her too?"

 "Of course. Ste – Ja – She'll fit right in."

 "You have more time travelers than just Henry?" Benny asked. Andrea shot him a wide-eyed look. He'd gotten news from the future?

 Dawn bit her lip before giving a sly smile. "Dorothy didn't stay in Kansas very long."

 Andrea's thoughts stuttered to a screeching halt. She couldn't possibly mean – 

 "Thank you."

 Andrea blinked at the solemnity of those two words. "It was nothing –"

 "No." Dawn shook her head. "Not for – not for putting up with me all this time." She looked down and then up to meet their eyes. "For surviving." Andrea felt her eyes go wide again because Lord knew how tight-lipped Dawn had been about things that hadn't happened yet for them. "For being kind to me at a time when I'm – nearly as lost as I've _been_ – and struggling to gain my feet and become Kyria Lux of SHIELD."

 "Peggy's SHIELD?" Andrea asked, even though it had to be.

 "The same."

 Andrea let herself smile at that. She'd been bored and intrigued enough to join Peggy's organization, but it was gratifying to know she would live and see Peggy's legacy continue. "I'll be seeing you then, Dawn. Or should I say Kyria?"

 Dawn's smile was soft. "My mother called me Kyria. Dawn and Lux are just – reflections. Facets."

 "Outta your funk you're certainly bright enough to be a diamond," Benny remarked.

 The time traveler brought up her hand to catch her laugh. "Thank you," she said again, surprising Benny with a hug. The vampire was startled, but not enough to not return it. 

 "Thanks yourself," Benny returned. Dawn flashed a smile before grabbing Andrea in a hug too.

 A mischievous grin crossed her face when she stepped back. "Live long and prosper," Dawn said solemnly. 

 Then she broke into a wide grin and dashed out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

Dawn stopped to stare as the flames greedily consuming the building. They were her way home, but there was something hypnotic about their movement, something ancient and feral and yet so completely devoid of intent. Fire just _was_.

 After so many months of overanalyzed worry, it was alluring.

 "Miss –" someone said, breaking her reverie.

 She jerked back, ducked under the outstretched hand, and ignored the panicked shouts as she sprinted into the fire. She didn't stop until she was past the blazing entryway, too far in to hear the crowd over the crackle and pop of the fire-soaked building.

 Bits of her clothes were on fire. She used her hands to smother the flames. It made her hands hurt, skin tight and red.

 Okay, so maybe she didn't plan this well.

 Taking a deep breath and trying not to cough at the smoky, heated quality of it, Dawn pulled lightning to cover her skin, an electric layer to give her some measure of protection from the roaring flames. She was hardier than average vanilla humans, which meant that, coupled with the force-field over her skin, she was in little immediate danger from the flames, and smoke inhalation wouldn't affect her right away. Thus armored, she ran deeper into the building.

 She found Elliot Crane first, screaming at the heart of the fire. Peggy was right there with him though, trying to talk over the roar of the flame, holding a gun in one hand as the other pressed a scrap of cloth to her face, trapped by the flames that spilled from his skin. Not human then. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. Not that that explained why he was burning the building down and how that related to whatever happened four years ago at some random movie theater.

 But all the fire wasn't good for Peggy; she had promised Andrea she'd bring Peggy with her.

 Dawn gathered lightning between her hands and with a sharp flick of her wrists, pushed in away from her to blanket the flames in the room. The force of it knocked Crane back, fire dying on his arms only to spring up again. But the brief hesitation was enough for her dart forward, slamming the hilt of her blade into the side of his head, and catching him as he crumpled.

 She eased the limp body to the floor and looked up to see Peggy training her gun on her.

 "You told me I would die this year," Agent Carter said, staring at her accusingly over the barrel of her gun.

 "History says we all died here," Dawn replied evenly as she smoothed over the smoldering of her shirt where Crane’s fire had touched.

 "How do you know what history says?" Peggy demanded over the roar of the fire that didn't need Crane to consume and multiply.

 "Because I lived it. The twenty-first century is when everything changes."

 "You really believe you're from the future."

 "I do," Dawn agreed. "Because I am. And since you're choices are stay here and burn or come with me and live, I'll be proving it to you."

 “You will?” The disbelief was almost as thick as the smoke.

 “I promised Andrea. And I’d never be able to look Steve in the eye if I left you here.”

 "Steve?” Peggy repeated in shock, lowering her gun. “What – what are you?"

 "An agent of SHIELD," she said shortly, ducking down to lift up Crane. Whatever he was, they could sort it out in the future. "And we're out of time. Gabriel!" she screamed.

 The flutter of wings was lost to the fire but Peggy's yelp of surprise as the disguised archangel appeared beside them was plainly audible.

 "You won't be needing that," he said with a finger snap. The gun vanished from Peggy's hands. Dawn shot her uncle a dirty look. "What? Fine." He snapped his fingers again and Dawn was suddenly wearing an ankle holster.

 "Is now really the time?" she demanded.

 "No time like the present."

 Dawn rolled her eyes, even as she grabbed Peggy's arm.

 "This is going to hurt," Gabriel warned.

 "I was stabbed for the trip here," she retorted. "Just get on with it!"

 As if to emphasize her words, something fell across the room and there was an ominous noise from above. Dawn looked up as the ceiling fell towards them as if in slow motion.

 Gabriel touched her shoulder.

 It felt like getting stabbed again.

 Tiny little knives, stabbing her all over her body, squeezing her and draining her of everything. Lightning slipped out of her grasp as the fire vanished and the floor vanished and the world vanished.

  _Where are you going?_ whispered a voice that sounded familiar, sounded like family, but was quickly lost in the void. _Do you know? Do you remember? You have to remember. Where are you going?_

  _Home_ , she replied – or tried to, but the void swallowed her words and her thoughts and twisted her all around and how had she done this what had she done what was she doing –

 And then the world returned.

 She stared up at the ceiling and distantly heard the safety of multiple guns being flicked back on.

 "Oh good," Bela drawled. "You're back. Thanks for disrupting the entire world order and promptly disappearing and leaving me as Acting Head Ninja, by the way. That was fun. We split NINJAT off from SHIELD and renamed it LEGION."

 "I thought SHIELD fell," she replied, words echoing oddly in the depths of her skull.

 "Fury put Coulson in charge," Bela explained. "They're still running from the Army though."

 "Ah."

 "Zarya?"

 "Oh, hi, James," Dawn said, still lying on her back. "Sorry about the disappearing thing. Apparently I had a date with history. I'm glad you're alright. Bela's been helping you?"

 "Yes," the ninja queen of cover bullshit replied acidly. "Remember Ross's obsession with Banner? Yeah, now superimpose that over Talbot and the Winter Soldier. Why do you think we're taking refuge in Gabriel's extension to Chuck's house?"

 "Sorry."

 "Where have you been?" Becky demanded. "Gabriel wouldn't tell us!"

 "How long was I gone?"

 "Six months, three weeks, two days, and about nine hours if our timeline is accurate," Bela offered. "Which, considering it's based on a three-month-old account of a crazy brainwashed assassin and the decomp on a couple of used angel condoms discovered two weeks after they attacked you, is a tad suspect."

 "Huh."

 "Where _were_ you?" Becky repeated.

 "1950."

 "Is that why Peggy Carter is on the kitchen floor?" asked a voice that sounded oddly like Agent Hand. Who had been with Bela when SHIELDRA happened, okay, maybe that did make sense.

 There was a flutter of angel wings.

 "Your first flight – and a temporal one at that – and you land on the breakfast table," Gabriel remarked cheerfully. "Full marks on making an entrance but we need to work on your landing."

 "Okay," Dawn agreed. And promptly passed out.


	9. Epilogue

Peggy's obituary was, word for word, what Dawn said it would be.

 It and the various reports of the fire were also the only records Andrea could find of Dawn Mason's existence.

 Had Andrea not given a name to the frantic woman who had run into the burning office, there would have been nothing to say that Dawn Mason had ever existed at all.

 But she _did_ existed – had existed. Would exist? The tenses didn’t matter. Dawn had lived with them – in this year – for six months. She had killed vampires in their parlor!

 Not that Andrea could share those details. She also couldn’t she avoid the fact that she was the one who named Dawn. None of Peggy’s friends missed that, nor could they fail to recognize the rough description of Andrea’s Dawn Mason (deceased) as the woman Peggy had been searching for. They made pointed inquiries.

 Facets, Dawn had said.

 So Andrea shaped a facet around the quiet, withdrawn woman who haunted the rooms of her house, telling Howard and Dugan and Mr. Jarvis and the others about a Dawn who was broken and tortured by things she had claimed to see of the tomorrows.

 "She really saw the future?" Gabe asked skeptically.

 "She thought she did," Andrea replied softly. "And stranger things have been known to occur."

 They filed Dawn Mason in the annals of SHIELD and gratefully pulled Andrea into the hole Peggy left behind.

 For her part, Andrea was glad the day of Peggy's funeral was gray and overcast. The empty casket was easier to take with Benny beside her and the knowledge that someday in the future Peggy was still alive.

 "Think Matt ever had a funeral?" Benny asked after the service.

 "What?" she asked, startled. She hadn’t gotten a chance yet to tell him what Matt had said before he left. "How did you know Dawn lived his death?"

 Her vampire gave her a wry smile. "The way she looked at him. And never talked about him. She'd occasionally mention her younger self, but never that her younger self is married." He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close. "Either one tell you what they were? Are, I guess."

 "I asked him," Andrea admitted.

 "Yeah? What'd he say?"

 "Genesis 6:4."

 "Genesis?" Benny repeated thoughtfully. " _The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in daughters of men, and they bore children unto them. They were the mighty men of old, men of renown_."

 She didn't know why she was surprised Benny had Bible verse memorized.

 "Nephilim," Benny mused. "Always thought they were a myth."

 "Most people would say that about you," she pointed out

 "Mm," he agreed with a nod. "Maybe we're all myths."

 Andrea made a disparaging noise.

 Benny chuckled. "In any event, love, you need to finish packing so we can sail the yacht to New York."

 "I finished packing."

 "You did?"

 "Mm-hmm," Andrea replied. "All that's left is to burn the rug." No amount of cleaning would get the blood out of it. 

 "Well then. Let's get on that. You and me have a date with the sea," Benny said with a roguish grin. Andrea laughed and let him hold her tighter.


End file.
